FOREMAN, Carl

Writer and Producer.
Nationality:
American.
Born:
Chicago, Illinois, 13 July 1914.
Education:
Attended Crane College; University of Illinois, Urbana, 1932–33;
Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, 1935–36; John Marshall
Law School, 1936–37.
Military Service:
1942–45—worked in Frank Capra's Army Documentary
Unit.
Family:
Married 1) Estelle Barr; one daughter; 2) Evelyn Smith; one son and one
daughter.
Career:
1937–38—worked as newspaper reporter, and public relations
manager for stage personalities;1938–42—worked in Hollywood
as reader and story analyst, gag writer for Bob Hope and Cantor radio
programs: jobs with MGM and Columbia; studied screenwriting at the League
of American Writers School under Robert Rossen and Dore Schary;
1941—first film as writer,
Spooks Run Wild
; 1946—formed Screen Plays Inc. with Stanley Kramer and George
Glass; 1952—investigated by the House Un-American Activities
Committee, and blacklisted; moved to Great Britain; used pseudonym for
next writing job; 1958—first film as producer,
The Key
; 1963–64—conducted screenwriting class in Israel;
1975—returned to the United States; 1977—formed High Noon

Carl Foreman (right) on the set of
The Victors

production company: contract with Universal as producer-writer;
1980—contract with Warner Bros..
Awards:
Writers Guild Robert Meltzer Award for
The Men
, 1950;
High Noon
, 1952; Academy Award for
The Bridge on the River Kwai
(awarded to Pierre Boulle because of the blacklisting), 1957; Writers
Guild Laurel Award, 1968, and Valentine Davies Award, 1976; Honorary
Companion, Order of the British Empire, 1970.
Member:
1965–71—Board of Governors, British Film Institute;
1975–83—Advisory Board, American Film Institute.
Died:
Of cancer in Beverly Hills, California, 26 June 1984.

Films as Writer:

1941

Spooks Run Wild
(Rosen)

1942

Rhythm Parade
(Bretherton and Gould)

1945

Dakota
(Kane) (story)

1948

So This Is New York
(Fleischer);
Let's Go to the Movies
(Gladden) (co-story)

1949

Champion
(Robson);
Home of the Brave
(Robson);
The Clay Pigeon
(Fleischer)

1950

The Men
(Zinnemann);
Young Man with a Horn
(
Young Man of Music
) (Curtiz);
Cyrano de Bergerac
(Gordon)

1952

High Noon
(Zinnemann)

1955

The Sleeping Tiger
(Losey) (co-sc as Derek Frey)

1957

The Bridge on the River Kwai
(Lean) (co-sc, uncredited)

Films as Writer and Producer:

1958

The Key
(Reed)

1961

The Guns of Navarone
(Thompson)

1963

The Victors
(+ d)

1969

Mackenna's Gold
(Thompson) (co-pr)

1972

Young Winston
(Attenborough)

1978

Force 10 from Navarone
(Hamilton) (story)

1981

When Time Ran Out
(
Earth's Final Fury
) (Goldstone)

Films as Producer/Executive Producer:

1959

The Mouse That Roared
(Arnold)

1966

Born Free
(Hill)

1969

Otley
(Clement)

1970

The Virgin Soldiers
(Dexter)

1971

Living Free
(Couffer)

1979

The Golden Gate Murders
(Grauman)

Publications

By FOREMAN: books—

A Cast of Lions
, London, 1966.

High Noon
(screenplay), in
Film Scripts One
, edited by George P. Garrett, O. B. Harrison, Jr., and Jane Gelfmann, New
York, 1971.

Foreman, Amanda, and Jonathan Foreman, "Our Dad Was No
Commie," in
New Statesman
, 26 March 1999.

* * *

In 1982, talking about his planned writing and direction of Philip
Hallie's
Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed
, Carl Foreman said that the book excited him because it is "about
conquering fear and doing what you have to do." Twenty years
earlier, Foreman had been drawn into the challenge of making a film about
the early life of Winston Churchill because "the central theme of
alienation was . . . one that men and women everywhere would recognize and
respond to."

These themes—the struggle with fear within, maintaining
self-respect in the context of the external world, and acknowledging the
continuing alienation of the individual—recur in all of the films
Foreman wrote and produced after 1949. During the making of
High Noon
, his personal experience and that of the screen character played by Gary
Cooper intersected: Foreman, by refusing to "name names"
before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and Cooper's
lawman, by refusing to flee when pursued by a trio of killers—both
against the background of apathetic society—similarly found exile.
Foreman's exile began in 1952 when he was blacklisted and denied
the producer's credit on
High Noon
. By 1958, working with Columbia Pictures in Great Britain, his name could
again appear in the credits of the films he wrote. But the shadow of the
blacklist remained, and Foreman made most of his subsequent films in
Europe. It was not until the day before he died that the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts
and Sciences officially acknowledged that Foreman (and Michael Wilson)
were the Oscar-winning screenwriters for
The Bridge on the River Kwai
.

Born in Illinois to Russian immigrants, Foreman attended Northwestern
University and the John Marshall Law School, but left to become a
newspaper reporter, public relations man for theater actors, radio writer
for Bob Hope and Eddie Cantor, and eventually a writer for marginal films
in Hollywood. During the Second World War he was part of Frank
Capra's film unit and worked on
Know Your Enemy: Japan
with Joris Ivens. This experience, he said, transformed him. After the
war ended Foreman, Stanley Kramer, and George Glass created an independent
production company, Screen Plays, Inc., which released impressive
low-budget films between 1948 and 1952 (when the company was purchased by
Columbia). Foreman wrote
Home of the Brave
,
The Men
,
Champion
, and
High Noon
, for example. With the last film he became a producer so he could protect
his creative contributions as a writer. As a writer-producer, he became
the principal author of his films while working with experienced
filmmakers like Carol Reed, J. Lee Thompson, and Richard Attenborough.
Only with
The Victors
in 1963 did he actually direct, as well as write and produce. Acting as a
producer only, he had at least two major successes,
The Mouse That Roared
in 1959 and
Born Free
in 1966.

As a writer Foreman took risks, from the flashbacks of
Home of the Brave
, to the "real time" of
High Noon
, to the "interview-camera" of
Young Winston
. Despair surfaced in
The Key
, one of his most affecting films (with major performances by Sophia
Loren, William Holden, and Trevor Howard), but the impression most often
left by his movies is that courage and conviction do make a difference,
and that the nobility of the human spirit can endure.

—Robert A. Haller

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